James Tunstead Burtchaell had been teaching Rosemary Haughton's 1967 book The Transformation of Man for a number of years when he published Philemon's Problem in 1973. Now, with both authors having reworked their books in the last two years, we are given an opportunity to compare and contrast the development of Burtchaell's and Haughton's thinking on how grace transforms human beings. The present essay sees an intellectual convergence between Haughton and Burtchaell; it sees much to be grateful for in both books by both authors; and it claims that Haughton's new book has developed her thinking on grace's communal character further than Burtchaell's new book has developed his thinking on the same topic.

Theoretical reflection on interreligious questions can be deeply enriched by the praxis of dialogue. The article describes an undergraduate course in which the students and professor engaged self-critically in such dialogue both with texts and one another in the classroom and with local representatives of three religions in a public symposium. In the latter context, students' encounter of the religious “other” was sharpened by having students, rather than the outside experts, present the papers on the course themes—a feature that also stimulated broader interest among the college community. Such a course illustrates the value and the limitations of a dialogical pedagogy in which attention is simultaneously given to learning about both other religions and the students' points of view, in their distinctness and in their interaction.

This article describes the reasons that a late medieval spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, was recently adopted as a textbook for a freshman course in “Christian Formation” at a mid-sized Evangelical Protestant university (Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, WA) and how it is taught there. It enumerates seven objections which contemporary American Evangelicals might raise to Thomas' spirituality, but shows how these very objections reveal a great deal about the religious and cultural ethos of those who make them. Since one of the course objectives is precisely to help students evaluate and critique their own culture and spirituality theologically, The Imitation proves to be singularly useful as a textbook. Excerpts from student writing assignments are analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of this way of using a classic from the Devotio Moderna with “postmodern” collegians.

According to the classic Catholic doctrine of property, owners who have more than they need are obliged to share their surplus with others who have less than they need. From the patristic era to the work of John Paul II, this obligation has been understood to arise most fundamentally from the character of the objects owned: the material world is a gift from the Creator, intended to meet the needs of all humanity. Three centuries ago, John Locke argued that 99 percent of the value of modern wealth is attributable not to natural resources but to human labor and invention, implicitly restricting the classic obligations of property owners to a mere 1 percent of wealth. Catholic moral theology has yet to integrate Locke's insight about human creativity and economic productivity into an adequate doctrine of property. This article surveys the problem and provides an outline of a constructive response.